I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to data communication, and more specifically to techniques for supporting data services.
II. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various data services for access terminals. A data service may be any service offered by a network and involving exchanges of data. Examples of such data services include voice, video, general Internet connectivity, multimedia streaming and broadcast services, Short Message Service (SMS) and text messaging services, geographic position-based services, etc. The spectrum of data services and their capabilities continue to grow at a rapid pace, and new data applications are continually developed to exploit these data services.
An access terminal may communicate with a wireless network to obtain a data service, e.g., an Internet Protocol (IP) based service such as Voice-over-IP (VoIP). The access terminal may be coupled to a terminal device and used by the terminal device to obtain another data service, e.g., general Internet service. The two data services may be obtained via different networks and may use different credentials. Credentials are information used to verify/authenticate a given user/device. Credentials typically include identification information (e.g., a username) and secret information (e.g., a password) that can verify the identification information. It is desirable to support different data services concurrently on the access terminal and the terminal device even if these data services use different credentials.